Commercial Fisheries

A billion people around the world rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein. While people in industrialized nations eat significantly more fish than those in developing countries, the majority of wild-caught fish comes from developing countries. But the supply is not bottomless. Throughout most of the world’s fishing areas, production has diminished since the 1980s, and the majority of fish stocks are fully exploited. With the decline of their food supply, seabirds, sea turtles, marine mammals, sharks, and other species have suffered. Many also succumb to entanglement in fishing gear, or are inadvertently trapped in nets as “bycatch.” Some marine ecosystems, including fragile coral reefs and coastal estuaries, have collapsed as a consequence of these threats.

WCS as an institution is committed to the long-term conservation and sustainability of fisheries around the world. Our conservationists help drive fisheries policy reform, protect areas of high biodiversity, and empower coastal communities to sustainably manage their marine resources.

WCS Projects

WCS is helping the Belize’s Department of Fisheries to reform its national fisheries, in part to ensure the survival of certainly deeply overfished species, including groupers and parrotfish. Our work also helps to protect the country’s fragile reefs, and establish more marine protected areas.

Shark fisheries have expanded in size and number around the world since the mid-1980s to meet the rapidly rising demand for shark fins, meat, and cartilage. Most of these fisheries are unregulated and undocumented. As a result, numerous shark species now face extinction. WCS is working to improve regulation of the global trade in shark products to reverse the decline of these remarkable fishes.

The Patagonian Sea’s fertile expanse is both a haven for wildlife and a magnet for the fishing industry. WCS has worked to influence conservation policy here since the 1970s. Our Sea and Sky Initiative promotes sustainable management of the region’s fisheries and identifies priority areas for conservation.